See if You're the Smartest Sports Gamer Alive

I am incredibly sick, so this will likely be the shortest newsletter of my tenure. However, we can still have some fun while I suppress the urge to cough every four seconds while blowing my nose every eight seconds.

I’ll be quickly running through a couple news stories, but first I want to share the quiz I gave to “premium” subscribers a couple weeks ago. I figure it’s time to open up the quiz to everyone and see Whatchu Know About Sports Games.

For those who want to read any premium newsletters, you can do so with the free trial, no matter whether you have done the 30-day free trial in the past or not. I will be dedicating the whole month of November to the Xbox 360 sports game launch lineup, so if you’re into that, subscribe now.

If you want to hang with your fellow OSers, here’s your weekly reminder to also join the OS Discord if you want to chat with me or others from the community. If you sign-up for the premium newsletter, send a direct message to either Rob S (thekernelpop) or ChaseB (chucklesbiscotti) on Discord, and either one of us will add you to the extra Supporters area on Discord, and we have a snazzy role and badge to give you on there, too.

We also now have an official OS app! You can download it now on Google Play and iOS.

Use That Brain

Take the quiz here on Sporcle, and then feel free to post your results on the Discord in the #general-chat area. I’ll be curious to see which questions really throw people off, and I plan to do more of these in the future if you folks are into them.

As for sports game news this week, there wasn’t a whole lot. We’re in the time of the season where everything has been out, so besides Football Manager going through its issues, there’s not much new to expect until after the year turns over.

That said, death, taxes, and sports games being all over the top 10 games sold in the fall are alive and well.

EA FC 26, NBA 2K26, EA FC 25, Madden 26 are all among the top 10 best selling games on PlayStation for October, and none of these should come as a surprise — not even FC 25. With soccer being a global sport, EA lowers the price of FC 25 accordingly to snag stragglers who don’t want to go for the new hotness but still need a footy fix.

Speaking of price drops, Madden 26 did get a price drop this week. If you’ve been on the fence, you can now get in for $40.

EA also reiterated (this time to its employees), that the buyout by the Saudis and other private investors will have no impact on the company either creatively or in terms of layoffs. I don’t think most folks are going to take this at face value, it will come down to EA’s actions once the deal is finalized and some amount of time passes.

That said, while I think any property within EA could be in some trouble, the sports games are the safest bets to be “protected” from a creative standpoint. Without diving too far into cultural/societal differences, it’s the BioWares of the EA portfolio that people are worried about being creatively stifled more than the EA Sports games of the portfolio.

Playground Productions has been trying to revive the “Backyard” series in various ways, including re-releasing old games on Steam and also promising an all-new game in the future. They will also be releasing an animated show on its YouTube page in the future, so stay tuned for more Pablo in your life.

Finally, you’ll be shocked (see: not shocked) to hear that most developers think Steam owns PC gaming because, well, Steam does. This goes back to my point last week about wondering how much Microsoft can really think about eating into Steam’s dominance as it tries to potentially “pivot” down the line into being less about hardware with its Xbox brand.

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase